Google+ The Duda Homestead: November 2011

Saturday, November 26, 2011

A Super Yummy Leftover Recipe :)

So I tend to "wing" recipes because I usually don't have all of the required ingredients on hand, or I just feel like making it a different way. I thought I should finally start writing down my successes, and figured why not post them, too! I was inspired for this recipe by a post I saw on the Etsy Blog.


I started with a pizza dough recipe from The Joy of Cooking. For the filling, I grated (very finely) a carrot and stalk of celery. I then cut up our leftover turkey very finely (you could shred it, but I found using kitchen scissors to cut small pieces was so easy and quick!). I also added some leftover mashed potatoes as a binder, and a little leftover gravy to keep it moist and stick it all together.


I rolled out the dough into two 12" circles (what most recipes will yield) and cut each of those into 4 equal pieces. I then loaded in the filling and folded up the corners, baked them at 350 degrees for I'm not sure how long (I just watched it) and voila! We dipped them in leftover cranberry sauce (the awesome recipe from the last post). SO yummy!!

Our 1st Thanksgiving

We were very excited to have our first Thanksgiving in our new home :) After stressing so much over the turkey, I completely neglected to get photos of everything else (we had some delicious contributions!) Jeanette brought awesome stuffing and mashed potatoes, my mom (Bev) brought pumpkin pie (yum) and sweet potatoes, and my great aunt Judy brought some green bean casserole and yummy cranberry-date bars. I made dinner rolls, homemade crannbery sauce (awesome recipe - see here), and of course the turkey (I got to find out just how finicky our oven's temperature is).

I also had a lot of fun making some little decorations for the day! I painted some little foam pumpkins, made placemats out of brown burlap, and made a banner out of some scraps of fabric I found at school. It's amazing what a little twine and hot glue can do!

Now, I won't let you believe that my first ever turkey was as perfect as it looks in the picture below :-P It looks beautiful, but was a little underdone, which in my opinion was way better than overdone. After a bit of carving, some juices started running a little pink, so Nick finished carving and we threw it back in the oven for a little while to finish it up. Crisis averted!




 




We hope everyone had a wonderful holiday!!

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Out With The Old, In With The New...

Furnace that is! We went from around 35% efficiency and using the heat as little as possible (burrr) up to an awesome 95% variable speed! Nicor & Tax credits here we come!


Note the distances between the furnace and water heater. So pretty and warm :)

The Little Charms :)

Here are a few of our favorite things about the house. It's all the little things that make it so special and perfect :)

Built-ins in the basement (and hallway, and bathroom)! 

I <3 Lamp(s) 

 Basement Workshop & Random pencil sharpener. In the Laundry Room.

Gorgeous old school wood floors. 

 Our awesome doorbell & knocker. 

 I've always wanted a nice view from a kitchen window over the sink :)

This picture says it all.

Friday, November 4, 2011

The things we do...for FHA

We really did get lucky with our FHA appraisal, and only needed to do some painting. Ok...a lot of painting. Nick slaved away on a Saturday, we both slaved away on Sunday, and on Monday (our 1 year anniversary) we went back to finish up a little bit, left for breakfast at our favorite place - Andre's - and hoped for the best. After an excruciating wait to hear if our efforts were enough, we finally got the OK and set our date to close! Here's a little before and after:

Garage Window Before
Garage Window After (but before I scraped paint off the windows :-P)
Window Well Before

And After!
 Window Before                                     and After

Before....

And After!
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